Chapter Five UTAH CASE STUDY
Christopher King, University of Texas at Austin Dan O’Shea, University of Texas at Austin
Section I. Background Information and Issues
When Utah became an early implementing state under the Workforce Investment Act (WIA) in July 1999, it was well positioned to do so. Utah has a long history of commitment to effective job training programs. Utah’s first comprehensive manpower efforts began 30 years ago when Utah applied for and secured a Comprehensive Manpower Pilot grant from the U.S. Department of Labor (U.S. DOL), becoming one of a handful of states and localities chosen to prepare the way for the comprehensive manpower block grants that followed. Utah participated as a "single-state" administrative entity over a number of substate planning regions that operated programs locally, an approach it followed under the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA) program from 1973 to 1982.
From 1983 to 1998, Utah organized more along the lines of other states, with nine distinct Job Training Partnership Act (JTPA) service delivery areas, each of which was overseen by its own Private Industry Council (PIC). In 1998, Utah reverted to single- state status, which it continued under WIA, with eight regional workforce planning councils, two of which encompass two subregions.1 Services now are delivered in One- Stop Employment Centers in five Department of Workforce Services (DWS) regional workforce service areas, each of which has a designated Regional Council on Workforce Services. Regional councils create a venue for the input of local business, partner agencies, community-based organizations, and other stakeholders into the state workforce system. In addition to single-state status, Utah chose a unique path: in an era of increasing privatization, and, in a state that is very conservative and business-oriented, Utah opted to deliver workforce development and related services almost exclusively with state agency employees.
The state had completely revamped its approach to workforce development and welfare service delivery in 1996 when it enacted House Bill 375, which created the Utah DWS, a consolidation of five former state agencies, and gave the new agency responsibility for major employment and training programs, as well as cash assistance, Food Stamp Employment and Training, child care, and other supportive services.
161 Business leaders, advocates, and key government officials all supported Utah’s workforce reforms. (Utah had also studied other states’ reforms, e.g., Michigan, Texas, carefully before crafting its own.) The reorganization reflects the state’s commitment to a seamless service delivery system that:
• Integrates workforce and related support services to foster self-sufficiency for all residents;
• Has a strong customer orientation, particularly towards meeting the employment and other needs of business and job seekers; and
• Delivers services through a locally responsive network of One-Stop Employment Centers built on statewide administration and regional collaboration.
House Bill 375 had emerged as a result of ongoing state efforts. A 1992 legislative audit report had found that employment and training services in Utah were “fragmented among 23 separate state and federal programs administered by six different state agencies.”2 Governor Mike Leavitt and Lieutenant Governor Olene Walker's 1996 Governor’s Task Force on Workforce Development report subsequently argued strongly for consolidation of workforce programs and agencies, seamless integration of workforce and related services, and strong state administration. Principles established for reform by the task force still guide Utah’s system today: • The workforce system must be customer-driven; • The system must measure results and be accountable throughout; • Program governance and operations must be simplified; • The system should be state-based with local input on design and delivery; • The system should have private sector leadership and direct involvement at all levels; • The system should be based on continuous improvement; • Education and training services provided under the system should be market- driven; and • Funding for workforce services should be commensurate with need. The major federal and state programs/funding streams within DWS currently are the Workforce Investment Act (WIA) programs; Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) and TANF work programs; Food Stamps and Food Stamp Employment and Training programs; the Employment Service (ES); unemployment insurance (UI), Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA), and North American Free Trade Act (NAFTA) TAA; subsidized child care; and several other smaller programs. The five agencies melded within DWS were the Utah Department of Employment Security (Employment Services, UI, labor market information, and veterans' programs); the Office of Family Support (TANF, Food Stamp programs, Medicaid, and child care); the Office of Job Training (job training programs); the Office of Child Care (employed child care
162 subsidies); and Turning Point (a state program for displaced homemakers). The major workforce related entities left outside DWS were economic development, public and higher education, and vocational rehabilitation.3
The state administered system has created several notable efficiencies. The state has cut in half the number of field offices for various agencies by consolidating services in the One-Stop Employment Centers. (Currently, there are about 50 statewide.) Staffing arrangements, policies, and service procedures are consistent across the state. The state retains major accountability for performance, allowing frontline staff to concentrate more on the quality of services. The state also has greater flexibility to shift funds between substate areas, enhancing responsiveness to local needs and circumstances.
Many elements of Utah’s approach reflect its business orientation and the influence of business practices on service delivery design. Utah adopted a strong business orientation for its employment and training programs decades ago that remains in place under its recent workforce reforms as well as WIA.4 Designated staff are trained to provide quality business services. The state has introduced enhanced point-of-service customer satisfaction measurement. Also, its articulated service design and franchise-like One-Stop Employment Centers provide consistent services at easily recognized DWS (“Utah’s Job Connection”) locations statewide.
Utah Workforce Development Chronology, 1992-2001
1992 Utah Legislative Auditor General’s Report characterizes employment and training system as “fragmented and unresponsive to customers.” 1994 Governor Leavitt establishes the Task Force on Workforce Development. 1996 Utah enacts House Bill 375, revamping both its workforce development and its welfare programs. 1997 Utah Department of Workforce Services opens for business in July. Utah passes the Family Employment Program (FEP) Act moving programs for TANF recipients from the Utah Department of Human Services to DWS and implementing a 36-month lifetime limit on aid. 1998 Utah shifts from nine SDAs under JTPA to a single-state area in July. 1998 WIA signed into law by President Clinton in August. 1999 Utah implements WIA as one of nine early implementing states, starting with adult and dislocated worker services on July 1st and youth services on September 30th. 2001 Utah enacts the Applied Technology Governance Act in June, transferring the applied technology centers from the State Board of Education to the State Board of Regents.
163 WIA has helped Utah leaders and DWS staff to "fine tune" their comprehensive, integrated approach to workforce development services. WIA’s identification and promotion of core, intensive, and training services has been adopted across all workforce programs. The state maintains a very strong employment focus, with access to employment training based on individual assessment, counseling, and state guidelines.
Utah initially adopted a "work first" or labor force attachment orientation for WIA, but has since shifted to its more balanced labor force attachment and human capital development approach. The DWS Executive Director, Governor Leavitt, and others promoted a "balanced", "flexible", or "blended" labor force attachment/human capital development approach. In part, this is driven by the governor’s firm belief—stated as one of his five guiding principles for the state in all policy areas, not just workforce development—that all Utahans should be assisted in reaching economic self-sufficiency. State and regional staff stress that individualized assessment is key to determining what individual job seekers need in terms of services and that skills acquisition is needed by many job seekers if they are to become self-sufficient, retain employment, and advance in their careers.
Utah DWS does not require front-end job search, except in the TANF work program. The Family Employment Program (FEP) has an immediate placement emphasis driven by program rules and the caseload reduction credit. DWS policy also explicitly supports the provision of training for up to 24 months, if appropriate.
Workforce programs and support services are parallel to, rather than integrated within, the education system and economic development efforts. The Department of Community and Economic Development and its Division of Business and Economic Development, the Utah State Office of Education (K-12), the Utah System of Higher Education, Applied Technology Education, DWS, and other agencies recognize the important relationship among education, job training, and economic development.5 Each complements and contributes to Governor Leavitt’s economic development initiatives, and education and economic development representatives serve on Utah’s State Council for Workforce Services, the state Workforce Investment Board (WIB). Relations are improving, but remain weak at present.
The passage of federal workforce reform (i.e., WIA) followed state reforms by several years and its implementation by more than a year. State and local staff cite WIA’s cumbersome regulatory and reporting requirements and a general lack of resources to “do the job” as the principal constraints to progress in workforce development.
Section II. Leadership and Governance
A. Leadership
Workforce initiatives in Utah have been driven primarily by Governor Mike Leavitt and Lieutenant Governor Olene Walker. The 1996 report of the Governor’s Task
164 Force on Workforce Development, in combination with an influential 1992 legislative audit report, laid the foundation for the current system, and imbued it with a strong sense of business ownership and direction. In 1997, Governor Leavitt selected a prominent Salt Lake City banker as DWS’ first executive director, to create and implement the new system and then to direct its transition to WIA. Under his leadership, business direction, state administration, local responsiveness, and customer-oriented services became defining features of the Utah system.
The first director retired and was succeeded in July 2002, and with an experienced staff of administrators, the agency continues to advance the state administered/locally delivered services for employers, job seekers, and individuals in need of supportive services. Beyond a few key individual actors, the state legislature, education, and organized labor have not played major leadership roles in the workforce system under WIA. Organized labor has never had a strong influence on Utah policy making or economic events.
Governor Leavitt continues to be actively engaged in workforce issues, but has delegated day-to-day responsibility for service design and operations to DWS directors and staff. The governor’s interest and engagement in WIA is somewhat less than in the initial period of implementation, but his leadership team is firmly in place and carrying out activities as envisioned and planned.
The Utah Legislature as a whole has not been very active in WIA policy-making since its very intense effort in workforce reform in the mid-1990s. Utah’s House majority whip is an ex officio, non-voting member of the state WIB and has maintained a strong interest in workforce development issues.6
The Utah State Council on Workforce Services, the state WIB, is rarely mentioned in conversations about leadership in workforce development policy, other than to say that members meet quarterly for brief sessions, typically ratifying recommendations made by the eight regional planning councils. The state council appears to be largely staff-led rather than a lead actor in workforce development policy.
In many respects, business has provided leadership that has been essential to the nature of workforce development policies and programs in Utah. By selecting a prominent Salt Lake City banker as both the Task Force director and the first DWS executive director (1997-2002), the governor ensured that Utah would enjoy strong business leadership. Several individuals characterized business leadership and the business role as far stronger now than under JTPA, though not necessarily as a result of WIA. The strong business orientation in Utah’s workforce programs is not only unique among the states, but predates even the Manpower Development and Training Act in the early 1960s. The Utah Employment Service was employer-dominated since it was established in the late 1930s. Business’s leadership role was further strengthened in the mid-1990s under Utah’s state workforce reforms.
165 Leadership from education, labor, and other sectors has not been strong. A core of academic researchers at the University of Utah has influenced key directions in workforce development policy making in Utah and nationally since the early 1960s.7 In addition, a Utah State AFL-CIO official serves as a paid contractor delivering state rapid response services, and has long been active in Utah workforce issues, having previously served as the director of Utah’s CETA program for a number of years.
B. Governance and Decentralization
Utah strengthened state authority over workforce development policies and programs substantially in 1996 when it enacted House Bill 375, centralizing service design and operations in its single-state approach to workforce development. WIA’s implementation in July 1999 had only marginal effects on state authority for workforce development.
Utah as a single-state, state-administered workforce program has centralized almost all policy decision making. There are no local WIBs. However, eight regional planning councils have substantial and substantive input into key aspects of workforce policy (e.g., planning), resource allocation (e.g., how performance monies are spent), service design (e.g., local program and Employment Center variations, provider selection), and the location of Employment Centers, Utah’s One-Stop Career Centers. Three of eight regional planning councils for the workforce areas are directed by former PIC directors. As several key staff stated, there is a "balance of power" within this highly centralized workforce structure, but, clearly, most power resides with the state. With few exceptions (e.g., a handful of co-located staff from partner programs), Employment Center staff are all Utah DWS employees.
The Utah State Council on Workforce Services is a "grandfathered" board that was already in place serving WIB-type functions since 1997 as a state human resource investment council under JTPA. From July 1998 to June 1999, it also served as the single-state council under JTPA before WIA was implemented. The Council enjoys somewhat enhanced authority under Utah House Bill 375, but mainly serves as a compliance entity. Utah also created a state youth council to comply with WIA provisions.
The 31-member State Council is comprised of 24 full voting members and seven non-voting members (six ex officio agency directors, plus the emeritus chair of the regional chairs). Voting members include seven employers (four small, three large); two employee organization/labor representatives; two community-based organization representatives; one veterans' representative; three public partner representatives (public education, higher education, and rehabilitation); and the eight chairs of the Regional Councils on Workforce Services.8 More than half of the voting representatives represent business, including all eight of the regional council chairs. Among other duties, the state council is responsible for: • Developing a state workforce services plan (for all workforce services, not just WIA);
166 • Reviewing regional workforce plans; • Working cooperatively with regional councils to oversee operations and ensure service delivery in line with plans; • Overseeing DWS in providing technical assistance to regional workforce areas; • Evaluating program performance; • Developing plans to improve program outcomes; • Improving the understanding and visibility of state workforce efforts through external and internal marketing strategies; • Preparing an annual report to the governor and the legislature; and • Coordinating planning and delivery of workforce services with education, vocational rehabilitation, and human services.
The state council plays both oversight and planning roles in Utah, but tends to be staff-driven and acts primarily in a ratification role for recommendations and decisions made by the eight regional planning councils. This arrangement seems to reflect a bottom-up/top-down system for decision making and planning, with a balance of state and regional power. The state clearly has the upper hand, but many decisions bubble up from the regions.
Utah also established the State Youth Council and eight Regional Youth Councils, some of which—e.g., the Central Region Youth Council in Salt Lake City—are more active than others. Only the State Youth Council is actually required under WIA, given its single-state status, but Utah has established the various youth councils in any event to parallel its regional planning councils. The State Youth Council has not played a significant role. The 26-member Central Region Youth Council in Salt Lake City, headed by Applied Technology Center Regional President Bo Hall, is very active, both in formulating youth policy and in overseeing youth services and their results. It has 24 voting members who primarily represent secondary and postsecondary education and community youth organizations, as well as Job Corps; only a handful represents business.
Aside from the AFL-CIO official who contracts with DWS to provide state rapid response services for dislocated workers, little mention was made of organized labor’s role in workforce development governance. Similarly, education’s contribution to workforce development appears marginal. Directors and staff characterized Utah public education as a locally driven system, in which state commitments appear to carry little weight as a practical matter, while postsecondary education, with its own state agency, has not been very strong. In addition, Utah lacks a fully developed system of community and technical colleges.
Because Utah is a single-state workforce area, no formal substate allocation formula is required. Utah makes no distinction between the governor’s reserve funds and substate allocations. Utah’s state structure also precludes strong interest in the use of expanded “work-flex” authority. DWS can largely do whatever it wants with respect to
167 substate regions and Employment Centers since they function as extensions of the state. Under WIA, DWS opted to continue utilizing some of the waivers that were in place under JTPA for Program Year (PY) 1998, including: • Use of administrative cost limitations under WIA; • Use of state procurement policy under WIA; • Internships at private, for-profit entities for WIA-eligible adults; • Simplified definitions of Youth Employability Enhancements (on a contingency basis); and • Providing work experience for dislocated workers.
With a single-state approach, the state has retained most authority for workforce- related decision making. Yet, regional councils help guide state council actions. Regional councils have less discretion and control than the PICs that preceded them under JTPA. This is an outcome of state reforms, not WIA.
Section III. Workforce System Planning
A. State Strategic Planning
WIA procedures have only marginally affected workforce planning in Utah; state law had already required annual comprehensive planning for DWS operations. Utah’s State Workforce Services Operational Business Plan is a guiding document for workforce development, while the WIA state strategic plan is largely a compliance document. DWS prepared Utah’s Strategic Five-Year State Workforce Investment Plan for Title I WIA and the Wagner-Peyser Act internally, with minimal input from its partners, and submitted the plan to the U.S. DOL prior to implementation in July 1999. DWS submitted a separate WIA Youth Transition Plan in September 1999. Both plans were reviewed and approved by the respective state councils. Utah has made only minor annual adjustments to the strategic plan since.
DWS had incorporated most of the intended program partners when it was established as a comprehensive workforce services agency in July 1997. Key steps in preparing the state plan included: • DWS formed an internal committee to analyze and outline Utah’s response to WIA; • DWS staff prepared a discussion paper on WIA issues and presented it to the state and regional councils for their reactions in January 1999; • The state council—which includes vocational rehabilitation and education agency representatives—developed recommendations regarding One-Stop Career Center service structures, performance measures, and other areas;
168 • The plan was transmitted electronically to all Employment Centers and state council members for review and comment; hard copies were also made available at many locations; and • Comments were incorporated into the final plan before submission to U.S. DOL in the spring of 1999.
As an early-implementing state, Utah did not intend to include plans for youth services until July 2000. However, U.S. DOL strongly encouraged state officials to include youth services before designating Utah an early implementing state. DWS subsequently prepared and submitted a separate plan for youth services.
Utah’s operational workforce planning process has been substantive and real. It does not resemble the “big staple,” at least in terms of the workforce funding streams that DWS has direct authority over and responsibility for. Nor has it been modified substantially for other reasons. Utah’s plan does not address business cycle downturns, but, with annual modifications, can respond reasonably well and timely to changing economic circumstances.
The chairs of the regional (and subregional) planning councils sit on the state council and actively participate in planning for workforce development services, including WIA. As noted, the council tends to ratify the decisions and recommendations made by the regional councils. The real and unanticipated downside of the Utah single- state approach may be that local elected officials are less involved than under JTPA and have less reason to engage and buy into the process. There is simply less in it for local elected officials than there was under preceding programs like JTPA or CETA. Note that chief elected officials do serve on all of the regional councils.
B. Local Planning
There is no local WIA planning requirement for Utah as a single-state area, but each substate workforce area’s council has an annual planning cycle. Utah’s state plan is a rolled-up, ratified version of the five regional workforce plans and decisions, and thus is well aligned with them.
Section IV. System Administration: Structure and Funding
A. System Overview
Administrative authority is uniform across regions and Employment Centers. Program resource allocations are determined at the state level.9 The state administered, locally delivered workforce and support services that DWS staff provide are structured along geographic and functional lines. At the state level, the Office of Service Delivery Support assists the regional directors of the five workforce service areas regarding the management and direct delivery of services for the multiple programs delivered at the Employment Centers. Other functional responsibilities are assigned to specialized offices or divisions at DWS for labor market information, finance, management information and
169 technology, and administration at the state level. See Appendix A, Figure 1 for the DWS organizational chart.
At the local level services and tasks are conducted by staff assigned to functional areas: administration, eligibility services, employment services, and business services. Eligibility services (Food Stamps, TANF, etc.), employment services (core, intensive, and training), and business services (labor exchange, labor market information, and workshops) are staffed and available at the full-service Employment Centers. Placement and career advancement leading to self-sufficiency guide service delivery.
Utah has taken a very broad and encompassing approach to workforce service delivery, consolidating most of the major workforce funding streams at the state level and passing them down to the five regions and local Employment Centers. Funding streams consolidated into DWS and passed down to the local Employment Centers are: WIA adult, dislocated worker, and youth programs; Wagner-Peyser Act/Employment Services programs; TANF work programs, as well as TANF cash assistance; TAA and NAFTA- TAA, including financial assistance as well as training; veterans’ employment and training programs; Food Stamp Employment and Training programs, as well as Food Stamps; and child care. Utah is one of only two states that chose not to operate a Welfare-to-Work formula program.10 In addition, Utah displaced worker program funds are allocated to the local Employment Centers. The span of administrative authority is uniform across regions and local Employment Centers, due to the fact that workforce development under DWS is a state-administered system.
Other major potential contributors to workforce development include public and adult education and vocational rehabilitation, which are administered by the Utah Office of Education; postsecondary education in the Department of Higher Education; and economic development in the Utah Department of Community and Economic Development. Their relationship to workforce services varies considerably at the regional and local levels.
Education and training opportunities are provided elsewhere by referral usually at community college campuses, employer worksites, or Applied Technology Centers (ATCs). In more remote rural areas, DWS tends to be the default youth services provider, while in urban areas, schools and community-based organizations tend to fill this role. The arrangements vary by area with provider capacity; however, the configuration in local Employment Centers tends to be very consistent from area to area across the state.
Interagency/program partner linkage is stronger at the local than the state level. In Moab, vocational rehabilitation, adult education, and postsecondary education actors are actively and regularly engaged with the Employment Center. (Moab is a small town set in a remote rural setting abutting several large national parks, e.g., Arches and Canyonlands.) All of these agencies are located within a mile or so of the local Employment Center, and, as in any small town, everyone knows everyone else and often has for many years. The Vocational Rehabilitation director sits on the regional council,
170 regularly attends meetings, and takes regular referrals. The Arches Education Center’s adult education program is aware of Employment Center services. The Moab Higher Education Center—a joint center offering classes from Utah State University, the College of Eastern Utah, and (soon) the new ATC—serves as a critical resource for educating and training area job seekers at the postsecondary level. The local economic development and tourism director is a key player in the governor’s Smart Site Initiative, promoting the diffusion of technology employment into rural areas, and is coordinating his efforts closely with Employment Center and education and training activities generally.
By far the largest urban area in Utah, with nearly 60 percent of its residents, Salt Lake City enjoys access to a wide array of workforce, education, and related services, many of which are engaged in the Central Region’s five Employment Centers. The Downtown Employment Center has active day-to-day partnerships with Vocational Rehabilitation (which leases space in the same building) and homeless services, and has had on-site learning and GED preparation efforts with Horizonte (a Salt Lake City independent school district, or ISD program), and computer training with Salt Lake Community College and the Latter-Day Saints Business College. On-site child care services are being piloted at the office as well. The Downtown Employment Center has also contracted directly with various vocational rehabilitation organizations (e.g., Silverado) to provide mental health and related services for its customers.
Labor exchange services for employers and job seekers are available online at www.jobs.utah.gov and assistance in using the system is provided by employment counselors and business services specialists, who also provide traditional placement services. Although UI claims are handled via the state call center, UI claimants may still come into Employment Centers to register for work. They can also register online at www.jobs.utah.gov.
Utah’s Central Region is home to five full-service Employment Centers— Downtown, Metro, Midvale, South County (in Salt Lake City/County), and Tooele (in Tooele County, west of Salt Lake City)—as well as a specialized Business Services Center in central Salt Lake City. The full-service centers in this region are much larger on average than others in Utah, reflecting population concentration in the Salt Lake City area. (More than three-quarters of the state’s 2.2 million people live within a 45-mile radius of Utah’s capital city, and fully three-fifths of them reside in the Salt Lake City Metropolitan Statistical Area.) The Central Region’s Employment Centers tend to have the largest numbers of full-time equivalent staff of any of the regions. On average, Central’s five Employment Centers have about 60 full-time equivalent employees staffing primarily eligibility and employment counseling services; business services are staffed only minimally at these centers due to the presence of the centralized Business Services Center in south Salt Lake City. Some eligibility functions have been consolidated in the Central Region office. DWS staff in this region also have been outstationed in other locations, including the Utah Refugee Employment and Community Center (for refugee services), the Temporary Placement Office (for homeless services), and the Magna Satellite Office.
171 The Downtown Employment Center, one of the larger Central Region Employment Centers, which, along with the Business Services Center, was the focus of our site visit, is unique in at least several respects. First, the Downtown Employment Center's location is in the central city neighborhood where many homeless individuals live and related services are housed, and thus has a strong human services orientation, having formerly been an Office of Family Services office. Second, the Downtown Employment Center has a full-time social worker on site to assist staff and customers with their specialized needs. Moreover, the Downtown Employment Center grew by 20 full-time staff in the last year, as services and needs became more concentrated in the Salt Lake area after the Olympics-related boom came to an end. Third, the Downtown Employment Center boasts staff who are fluent in 15 different languages, ranging from German and Spanish to Bosnian, Vietnamese, and Swahili.11 Fourth, it has ongoing partnerships with homeless centers, health clinics, and other social services groups. Fifth, it is also located a few short blocks from Welfare Square, the transient services center of the Church of Christ of Latter Day Saints.
In the Eastern Region, we focused our attention on centers in Price and especially Moab. Moab, with its size, geographic isolation, and rural nature, tends to be highly collaborative. Moab is located in Grand County in southeastern Utah, a county with only about 8,000 year-round residents. Moab’s Employment Center is housed in a very new facility and has only 15 full-time equivalent staff, offering the full range of eligibility, employment counseling, and business services. Moab also has what it refers to as its “Up Team,” staff who man the counter in the front office and guide customers to self-directed and other services as needed. Its approach has a highly personal feel to it that might not always be possible in most large urban Employment Centers. As Moab staff indicated, they “know their customers” job seekers and employers personally and see them every day in the grocery store.
See Appendix B, Table 1 for Utah’s administrative and service delivery arrangements.
B. Memoranda of Understanding and Partnership Building
DWS drives the memoranda of understanding (MOU) process at the state and the local level in Utah. To align WIA and other workforce services at DWS with those provided by partner agencies, DWS has used an "umbrella" MOU with most state agencies and programs. The document is a broad, generic statement of roles and relationships that complies with WIA requirements.
Utah DWS initially negotiated MOUs for PY 1999 with all of its partner agencies, including: the Utah Office of Rehabilitation; the Utah Department of Community and Economic Development; the Utah Office of Education; the Utah System of Higher Education; the Utah Department of Human Services; and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service and Green Thumb, Inc., for older worker services. DWS negotiated a separate MOU for PY 1999 with the Futures Through Training organization for services to migrants and seasonal farmworkers under WIA’s National Programs
172 provisions. For PY 2000, DWS expanded the umbrella MOU to include Futures Through Training.
C. Education
DWS has made a number of attempts to get education more involved in the workforce development system, but adult education, secondary, and postsecondary education still lack strong connections. Workforce development and both public and higher education have enjoyed good relationships over the years, but they have tended to operate largely as parallel systems. Differences in authority, goals, and objectives, and provider reporting requirements, as well as decentralization and resource issues all have contributed to inconsistent involvement. Utah’s system of public education is authorized in the state constitution, while workforce programs are provided for in legislation. Higher education is not provided for in the state constitution but enjoys higher status than workforce development.
Utah lacks a statewide community college system as such, but now has a reasonable equivalent. Until just a few years ago, there were only four institutions of higher education in the state, though there were several two-year occupationally oriented schools (located in Cedar City, Ephraim, Ogden, Price, and St. George), as well as technical schools in Provo and Salt Lake City. The occupational schools in Cedar City and Ogden developed into four-year colleges and now are beginning to offer graduate classes, as is Provo’s two-year technical school. And, Salt Lake Technical College has become Salt Lake Community College. All of these institutions still have substantial technical occupational offerings.
There are relatively few community college campuses, and the Utah College of Applied Technology (UCAT) has not yet fully developed its network of regional centers. The network of ATCs under the UCAT is viewed as an emerging cornerstone for linking education and workforce development in Utah. Unfortunately, the UCAT system has not been fully funded. Governor Leavitt has pushed for full implementation of the statewide system of ten ATCs, but only four are now serving portions of the state.12 The ATCs began under the auspices of public education and were created to offer more sophisticated secondary vocational education on a multi-school level than could be provided in individual high schools. Their adult enrollments eventually exceeded their high school student enrollments, leading them onto the uncompleted path to higher education.
At the state level, the connection between adult/continuing education and workforce services is limited. Participation in adult education varies considerably by region and local area. Once again, the decentralized nature of ISDs presents challenges to implementing state policy when it comes to effective workforce/education linkages. In Moab, the Arches Education Center, located in a portable building on the local high school campus, has been serving both alternative high school students and adult education enrollees. Their numbers are small and the intensity of their intervention is
173 quite low: of 138 students reported as participating at the Arches Education Center over the past year, only 30 were reported to have participated for more than 12 hours.
Both K-12 and postsecondary education are represented on all state and regional youth councils. As mentioned earlier, public education has only weak ties to WIA in Utah, in large part reflecting the high level of decentralization in the state’s K-12 system. Local ISDs are relatively free to go their own way and have apparently not found participation in WIA worthwhile to date.
The Utah State Office of Rehabilitation Services and DWS efforts to coordinate services are at times constrained by WIA’s accountability measures, which may conflict with the employment prospects of persons with disabilities. The Office of Rehabilitation Services is generally seen as a purchaser of education and training services rather than as an agency to coordinate with.
D. State and Local Workforce Investment Board Funding Issues
Utah’s highly integrative approach to workforce service delivery allows it to be flexible in shifting participants among the “portfolio” of funding streams (e.g., from WIA to TANF) for which a client is eligible as the need arises. State administration allows the transferring of program funds between workforce regions and offices. DWS has prioritized low-income and welfare recipients as target populations for services. Utah seeks to help those most in need to attain self-sufficiency.
Resource limitations are affecting the capacity of Utah’s workforce system to accomplish its mission, goals, and objectives. Not only have WIA, Wagner-Peyser Act, and child care allocations been declining in the face of rising unemployment and growing post-Olympics/9-11 dislocation, but the Utah legislature has not been favorably disposed to filling these gaps in federal support. The governor’s ATC initiative has not been fully funded at the levels promised.
Education and training have been especially constrained by resource limitations under WIA, and, consequently DWS has prioritized target populations for training services in both its adult and dislocated worker programs. Low-income persons generally are the top priority, followed by welfare recipients. In addition, since 2001 each Employment Center has been deciding whom to refer to services using WIA Prioritization Sheets. Counselors use these sheets to allocate points to eligible individuals in a number of categories (see nearby box for categories). Higher point totals are awarded for greater need.
WIA Prioritization Sheets are used in conjunction with an Education and Training Services Approval Guide that provides employment counselors with a guide to assessing customer need and the appropriateness of services. Need is tied to the lack of marketable skills and whether suitable employment is available. Appropriateness is linked to assessment of the individual’s ability to succeed, whether they have a reasonable expectation of employment, cost-reasonableness and proximity of training, and whether
174 the training or worksite learning can be completed in the prescribed time limits, among others.
WIA, which is 100 percent federally funded, comprises only about three percent of the DWS budget when TANF and Food Stamp program benefits are included in the total. Local governments, nonprofit organizations, and private sector enterprises contribute very little of note to workforce development, although DWS is currently checking on child care in-kind match and cash resources at the local level. The use of TANF (especially) and Wagner-Peyser Act funding to support core services has allowed Utah to reserve most of its WIA funds for training.
WIA Prioritization Sheets – Categories and Points
WIA Adults WIA Dislocated Workers Employment Skills (0-5) Replacement Wage (0-4) Education (0-4) Education (0-4) Single Head of Household (0-2) Single Head of Household (0-2) No. of Dependents (0-3) Transferability of Wage (Skills) (0-3) Desired Length of Training (1-4) Desired Length of Training (1-4) Availability of Other Funding (1-4) Verified Employment After Training (0-1) Disability, Substantial (0-1) Occupation Work History-Tenure (1-3) Offender (0-1) Transferable to Demand Occupation (0-3) Homeless (0-1)
Section V. One-Stop Career Center Organization and Operations
A. State and Local Overview
DWS prescribes the services and approach used in its 37 state operated and administered full-service Employment Centers, Utah’s One-Stop Career Centers. Utah does not have a chartering process, per se, but all aspects of its One-Stop Employment Centers—except for their location and the day-to-day partner relationships—are determined by DWS state policy.
DWS prescribes the design and most operating procedures for Employment Centers, including the types and staff configuration of eligibility, employment counseling, and business services teams. Information, eligibility, core, intensive, and case management services may be provided seamlessly by specialized staff, generic staff, or cross-functional teams without reference to funding source.
This process began in 1998 when DWS set “franchising” standards to create a consistent center look and feel. This process was expanded in early 1999 when DWS’ director formed the second Employment Center Design Team, focusing on customer
175 service delivery and support services pathways. A third Employment Center Design Team reported to DWS in the latter half of 2000 in a concise, thoughtful document entitled “Employment Center Services: Service Delivery Design”. This report details Employment Center vision, mission, and unifying principles, provides a standard service delivery flowchart, and describes the services provided to individuals and employers, including self-directed, core (including business), intensive/training, eligibility, and other supportive services. There is local flexibility concerning whether the staff is multi- functional or specialized in each center.
Information specialists (formerly Wagner-Peyser Act staff) assist clients in the “Job Connection” area, usually a bank of computers in an open work environment where job seekers select from a variety of automated and print resources to address their employment concerns. Clients are asked to register for employment services, and those who seek additional assistance are “triaged” to an employment counselor or eligibility specialist, as appropriate. WIA registration usually occurs when an individual is receiving intensive services and is likely to advance to training.
Not surprisingly, given its strong business orientation, Utah takes “branding” seriously. This has particular significance considering that all of its Employment Centers are staffed entirely by state employees. Centers feature common signage, functionally arranged floor plans, and common services.
Services ranging from those supported under WIA, Employment Services, TANF programs, the Food Stamp program and Food Stamp Employment and Training, and child care are offered at the Employment Centers not as “programs” but as generic services (e.g., job search, career counseling), which are provided seamlessly without reference to funding source.
Almost all Employment Centers are full-service One-Stop Career Centers, but there are also a number of “satellite” Employment Centers in remote, rural parts of the state that offer limited days and hours of operation. (See Appendix A, Figure 2 for a map noting the location of these Employment Centers statewide.) A number of “storefront” Employment Centers, emphasizing self-services, job search assistance, and access to supportive services, opened in early 2000. Utah experimented with automated kiosks in the late 1980s and early 1990s, but decided not to continue them due to their perceived ineffectiveness and low rates of utilization. DWS staff have no interest in reviving kiosks, especially in light of the high shares of the state’s population that have online access either at home, at work, or through libraries and community centers.
DWS specifies the services and partners to be present on site, and the scope of DWS efforts is broad. There are 19 WIA-required partners. The following required partners are part of Utah DWS, and their funding is thus an integral part of Employment Center operations across the state: WIA adult, dislocated worker, and youth programs; Employment Services; TAA, NAFTA-TAA, UI, veterans' employment and training programs. Adult and postsecondary education, Vocational Rehabilitation, older workers programs, Migrant Seasonal Farm Workers, and Job Corps programs are required
176 partners but are not part of DWS. Most of these non-DWS programs are signatories to the umbrella state-level MOU. The status of Community Services Block Grant, Housing and Urban Development, and Native American programs is unclear at this point, though all have been good DWS partners over time.
Note that in Utah, discussion of “partners” in the context of a fully integrated One-Stop delivery system with seamless services supported by DWS-administered programs, misses the point: it is their funding and the services they support that are present in Utah’s Employment Centers, not their programs as such. The “partners” discussion has more relevance in terms of non-DWS agencies and programs. Utah does not operate formula Welfare-to-Work or Youth Opportunity grant programs.
Optional partners/services that are part of DWS and offered in Employment Centers include: TANF and TANF work programs (FEP), Food Stamps and Food Stamp Employment and Training, and child care. Other optional partners such as National and Community Service Act programs, community and technical colleges, and economic development are often linked to Employment Centers via referral processes, but not physically housed in them.
Utah’s functional Employment Center approach predates WIA by two years but has accommodated to WIA requirements in limited ways. “Grandfathering” has much to do with it. Utah checks regularly to see what other leading states (e.g., Michigan, Wisconsin, Texas) have done with their One-Stop delivery system approaches. Utah DWS has invested considerable time and resources to make services as seamless as possible for its customers, both employers and job seekers. The hard work largely takes place behind the scenes, making funding streams work for customers without forcing them to understand the intricacies or problems entailed in their use. Their seamless- service approach appears to be working very well.
Utah’s integrated, holistic, seamless approach to service delivery is very innovative, especially given that it has been accomplished—including the creation of a very active business services group—within a state agency that would have found it easier to mimic federal/state silos than to press for functional teams offering seamless services. In addition, more self-directed services were slated to go online for employers and job seekers in November 2002. Business services are real, not rhetorical in Utah.
TANF and TANF work programs (FEP) are an integral part of DWS and its many Employment Centers. DWS relies heavily on TANF funds to support core, training, and child care services. TANF funds are plentiful relative to Wagner-Peyser Act and WIA, and many DWS customers are TANF recipients or eligible for TANF.
B. Employer and Business Engagement
The Utah business services approach predated WIA, but is deepening and expanding steadily due to technological advances (e.g., www.jobs.utah.gov), customer satisfaction, and continuous improvement efforts supported by the act. DWS views its
177 mission in part as empowering employers. Business leaders not only chair, but also are dominant on the state council.
Components of business services include: workforce information (Utah’s term for labor market information), economic development linkages, and traditional labor exchange services, including job posting and job matching. Business services are centralized in the Salt Lake City area, and diffused across Employment Centers in the remainder of the state.
Employment counselor and business services teams perform intermediary roles. Sectoral and cluster-based strategies do not play a prominent role in Utah’s workforce development strategy. Although it is not explicitly sectoral or cluster-based, the Smart Site Initiative may adopt such an approach.
Utah’s efforts to encourage and support business engagement in workforce development began with the choice of a prominent Salt Lake City banker as the first executive director for DWS and the creation of extensive business services accessible at every Employment Center. In addition, one of the strategies embodied in Governor Leavitt’s 1000-Day Economic Plan Initiative, launched on March 13, 2002, is “to develop Utah as a center for technology investment, employment and entrepreneurship.” Action steps for this plan include:
• Creating a network of individual, regional, and international alliances that build upon Utah’s strengths;
• Creating economic ecosystems and making them a well-recognized icon of Utah technology leadership (e.g., web services, digital media, biotechnology and human genetics, medical devices, sport, and tourism);
• Developing rural “smart sites;” and
• Maintaining a regulatory environment where business can operate profitably.
The Governor’s 1,000-Day Economic Plan was followed in April 2002 by a companion 1,000-Day Workforce Development Plan that was developed and approved by the state and the regional councils. This plan focuses on improving employer/business (as well as other) partnerships to support the economic plan.
The DWS state model prescribes business service provision in all Employment Centers tied to three areas of need identified for its business customers—qualified job applicants; information about DWS services, the economy, and other business resources; and responsiveness and individualized service. Business services offered via Employment Centers include:
• Self-directed services, such as electronic employment exchange, workforce information, and links to related resources;
178 • Staff-assisted recruitment services, such as job matching and placement, state and worldwide job posting via the Internet, use of DWS facilities, and job fairs;
• Business education services, such as seminars and workshops on relevant topics, workforce information, work/life consultations, business resource materials;
• Technology training on UWORKS, Utah's case management and reporting system, and other resources;
• Other business services, such as information on subsidized child care, worksite learning, job development, layoff intervention and rapid response assistance, alien labor certification, assistance with Welfare-to-Work and Work Opportunity Tax Credits (WOTC), etc.;
• Other value-added business services (fee-based), such as customized training, job description writing, background checks, Utah employer conferences, business seminars and workshops, enhanced job fairs;
• Partnerships with economic development agencies to assist new and expanding businesses; and
• Targeted services by region, including—especially for small to medium-sized employers—job order accounts.
In early 2000, the Central Region established a separate Business Services Center in south central Salt Lake City to serve employers and businesses, the only region to have done so. This center was created at the direction of the Central Region Council. The same business services are available at this location as at any Employment Center, but the Business Services Center atmosphere is more tailored to business, offering them a “single point of contact” that the regional council felt was merited given the greater density of employers in the Salt Lake City area.
Utah markets services to businesses and employers many different ways, ranging from regular workshops and seminars, including presentations by DWS state and regional economists on local economic and labor market developments. They also conduct large job and career fairs. Business services are a DWS Employment Center function and are not contracted out. Business/employer services in Utah are delivered entirely by DWS state staff, some of whom have come to DWS with considerable private sector experience.
Employment Centers provide staff-assisted job referrals to employers but no real distinction is made within DWS between Wagner-Peyser Act funded service and others. Employment counselors are paid through a combination of funding sources, including Wagner-Peyser Act, based on a cost allocation formula tied to "random-moment time survey" samples.
179 Utah’s Employment Centers typically have both business services and employment counselor staff teams. Each does job development to some extent and markets the WOTC and related services. WOTC is just one part of the larger package of business services provided by DWS. All WOTC applications are handled centrally by DWS staff: last year they processed some 3,000 WOTC applications, of which about 15 percent were approved. Utah does not appear to be pursuing old-style “smokestack chasing” with public subsidies so much as trying to grow existing businesses. Job development is also conducted within the Employment Centers by DWS staff. Local economic development activities are also engaged in by local groups, e.g., the director of economic development in Moab.
Utah developed its own customer satisfaction survey for use with job seekers and employers in samples large enough to support continuous improvement efforts at or very near the point of service. DWS has approached the issue of customer satisfaction very seriously. It designed and implemented customer satisfaction surveys that seek to determine satisfaction and the factors producing it at the point of service. DWS was not happy with the U.S. DOL-mandated approach (for WIA and Wagner-Peyser Act). Instead, DWS developed a 22-question survey for 2001 that was mailed to a stratified sample of 7,336 employers, designed to be valid in each state Employment Center. They got a 16 percent response rate (par for mail surveys). They included questions designed to elicit both satisfaction responses and specific comments on which services and staffing needed improvement and in what ways. DWS does not collect data at present on return business from its employer customers, but will begin to track this in the near future.
Self-sufficiency wages and benefits are definitely an explicit part of the bargain struck with businesses, starting with strong statements by the governor and extending to the workforce information that is used in job development and training.
C. Operational Issues
Labor exchange services are fully integrated into Utah’s Employment Centers. WIA funding tends to be directed to training rather than core/labor exchange services. Labor exchange is provided in a seamless-services approach. Coordination between WIA and Wagner-Peyser Act services is no longer an issue in Utah since the funds that support Employment Center team members come from these and other sources (e.g., TANF, Food Stamp Employment and Training). DWS staff who are organized into eligibility, employment counselor, and business services teams at the Employment Centers, perform labor exchange services.
Labor market intermediaries do not play a significant role in Utah’s workforce development system. Instead, Employment Centers are the central player with state DWS staff providing most services. Employment counselor and business services teams tend to perform intermediary roles in Utah. Sectoral and cluster-based strategies do not play a prominent role in Utah’s workforce development strategy. The governor’s Smart Site Initiative may be the exception, however, it is not explicitly sectoral or cluster-based,
180 but rather a workforce development effort that is currently working to find innovative means for applying advanced technologies with rural development.
Internet-based providers are having a significant impact on labor exchange, in part prompting Utah to design and (in November 2002) offer self-directed labor exchange services to businesses and job seekers through www.jobs.utah.gov. Eventually, www.jobs.utah.gov will interface with UWORKS, Utah’s case management and reporting system. Social Security numbers will be used for tracking job offers and applications of individual job seekers, an approach now being piloted in several local sites.
America’s Job and Talent Banks complement Employment Center labor exchange services in Utah. DWS has incorporated links to all major Internet-based labor exchange services, as well as to major employer websites.
D. One-Stop Career Center Contracting and Cost Sharing
Statewide administration of the Employment Centers narrows the range of contracting opportunities and simplifies cost sharing. Employment Centers are not contracted out but are operated exclusively by DWS staff statewide. DWS Employment Center staff provide core and intensive services. Other services—notably training, education, and child care—are accessed off-site via referrals and contracts with other providers. Participants in training are automatically counted, retrospectively, as core and intensive participants once enrolled in and registered for training. There are far fewer opportunities for private, for-profit, and non-profit organizations in Utah than in most other states due to its state administered workforce system.
In urban areas, youth services tend to be provided off-site via contracts or under MOUs with local ISDs and other providers. Faith-based providers and community-based organizations do provide workforce services around the state, but typically not on a contractual basis. For example, the Latter Day Saints Church, Catholic Charities, and other faith-based organizations are very active in many aspects of welfare services. 13
Utah relies on workload allocation factors and a random-moment time survey, administered to 900 DWS staff quarterly, as its cross-program, cost-allocation system for administrative and service costs. Cost-allocation procedures have been modified minimally to accommodate WIA requirements.
TANF and Wagner-Peyser Act funds cover most core services in the Employment Centers. TANF is the preferred funding source due its size relative to other funding streams. WIA funds are reserved mainly for training, although TANF also pays for training for welfare recipients. There is a tendency to rely on the more flush funding streams, starting with TANF as the largest at present.
Facilities costs for Employment Centers are allocated across funding streams based on square footage occupied by program staff in all areas of the state. These
181 arrangements do not vary by region or local Employment Center. DWS uses aggregate program case counts to allocate costs for self-directed services.
Utah continues to strive for seamless services with cost-allocation occurring very much behind the scenes. Job seekers and employer customers are generally unaware of which funding streams are financing the services they receive.
Section VI. Services and Participation
This section addresses individual services and participation and draws upon data provided in Appendix B, Table 2: Utah Workforce Development Participation Patterns (PY 2001).
A. Individual Services
Individual job seeker services include the following, which are available to customers universally: • Computer access to Utah’s Job Bank, America’s Job Bank, Career Exploration Guide, resume preparation tools, workforce/labor market information; • Job referrals; • Veterans’ services; • Job search assistance; • Job skills workshops; • Skills testing; • Career counseling; • Connection to educational opportunities; • Vocational assessment; and • Job training opportunities, including both classroom training financed by ITAs and on-the-job training and customized training with employers. In addition, support services offered to job seeker customers include: • Financial assistance, e.g., the FEP/TANF, General Assistance, Working Toward Employment (for disabled job seekers), and Refugee Cash Assistance; • Food Stamp Program; • Child care assistance; and • Medical assistance.
It is unclear whether different classes of job seekers turn to Employment Centers for services at higher rates. No such estimates are available from DWS.
182 Employment Centers tend to serve low-income families with children, including TANF/FEP recipients, driven largely by their funding streams. TANF is the largest of the funding streams (along with child care).
Note that Utah’s approach to welfare reform was integrally tied to its workforce development reforms. The FEP, the Utah TANF program with a 36-month lifetime benefit limit, stresses four principles:
• Self-sufficiency planning prior to eligibility determination with a grant diversion option;
• Universal, mandatory participation in employment-related activities based on individualized self-sufficiency plans;14
• Employment that is encouraged and supported rather than penalized; and
• Simplified cash assistance, Food Stamp Program, Medicaid, and child care rules so that staff and participants can focus on self-sufficiency, not eligibility.
Professionals and managers are served but to a much lesser extent, again in part due to the requirements of the major funding streams, but also following the traditional association of publicly funded workforce services with low-wage workers and the employers who hire them.
The Service Delivery System flow chart depicts typical customer flow in Utah Employment Centers (see Appendix A, Figure 3). Clients who enter an Employment Center encounter a staff person at a reception desk or counter who does an initial informal screening of needs and interests in order to refer them to the right team, whether eligibility or employment counseling, or to self-directed resources (e.g., computerized job services).
There is considerable variation in registration procedures for WIA and Employment Services. WIA is largely driven by performance measures and expectations for success from DWS. Most clients are registered only when they appear to be solid bets for labor market success, and thus likely to contribute towards meeting performance standards statewide. Training registration/enrollment tends to incorporate back- enrollment in core and intensive services as well, as noted above. The actual point at which registration occurs may vary from center to center.
Utah captures participation in Wagner-Peyser Act funded services, recording more than 250,000 job seekers in PY 2001. Customers using universal services have been encouraged to register for employment services (Form 61), enabling DWS to track core and mediated services upon data entry into UWORKS. DWS has piloted the use of Social Security numbers for tracking self-directed services participation and found that the overwhelming majority of customers is quite willing to provide full identifying information, including Social Security numbers, when asked to do so on sign-in sheets.
183 Anyone who wants a job referral, automated (www.jobs.utah.gov) or manual, must register for services and can be tracked.
WIA training accounted for about 60 percent of statewide expenditures for adults and dislocated workers in PY 2000, with shares ranging from 55 percent in the rural Eastern Region to 68 to 78 percent in the Central Region (Salt Lake). WIA-related training limitations include: limited, unpredictable funding; WIA’s initial “work first” philosophy; performance measures and expectations; variable capacity/access; and initial implementation of eligible training provider provisions.
The Moab Employment Center features what it calls "Up-Team" staffing. Several cross-trained staff man the front reception counter and can handle most needs and issues that typically arise. They are more knowledgeable of service requirements and availability than the typical front-desk staffer and also “pinch-hit” for eligibility or employment counselor staff as needed.
Core services are available to all customers universally, but are deemed particularly appropriate for job-ready customers. Core services are accessed with, and some without, staff assistance and include the following as outlined in DWS' services 2000 documentation, Employment Center Services:
• Employment Services registration (Form 61 or similar) and skills review;
• Employment exchange activities, including skills identification;
• Job Connection, an open area within the Employment Center that includes computer stations for access to workforce information and labor exchange;
• Workshops on topics including pre-employment skills, life management skills, assertive communication skills, and job retention skills;
• Skills testing;
• Career counseling, e.g., interest inventories, achievement, and ability tests;
• Labor market/workforce information;
• Access to Food Stamps;
• Employment-supported child care; and
• Initial assessment.
According to DWS staff, intensive and training services are not clearly separable categories of service. Such services are not offered universally, but to customers “for whom a job referral is not a sufficient service.” According to Utah DWS:
184 Intensive and Training Services work hand-in-hand. All “Training Services” customers are also Intensive Service customerscomplete with assessments, employment plans, and follow-up services. All “Intensive Services” customers are potential recipients of some type of training servicewhether it be some type of work site learning opportunity or a classroom training experience. In addition, every Intensive and Training Services customer must be directed to or assisted with all appropriate self- directed and Core services. (DWS, Employment Center Services, 2000, p. 19).
Intensive services are delivered by a multi-functional team of employment experts—one of whom is designated the individual’s employment counselor—and include: comprehensive and formal assessment; employment planning; and referral to other community resources. Finally, training services include both classroom training and worksite learning opportunities (on-the-job training).
Under DWS policy, training duration may be as long as 24 months, rather than the 12 months encouraged under WIA, should individual and local economic circumstances support it. DWS is able to support such participation in part through reliance on other, non-WIA funding streams.
There is a prioritization process in effect now (the criteria for which are discussed above) to determine who gets access to training, as provided for under WIA. In addition, local capacity limits play a role, e.g., ATCs only exist currently in four of the ten regions they are planned for. In addition, performance standards and expectations play a substantial role: only those who are expected to benefit from and demonstrate success per the performance measures will ultimately be enrolled in training.
Employment Center services are marketed broadly to individuals, not in targeted campaigns. The main group targeted for services by DWS is low-income workers, followed by welfare recipients, who receive priority for training services due to resource limitations. Local client targeting depends on funding streams and associated eligibility restrictions. Local Employment Centers and the state DWS are responsible for marketing workforce services for individuals. Marketing to foster usage of workforce services began several years prior to WIA implementation in Utah.
B. Participation
Utah’s approach to service delivery can be characterized as “balanced,” in that, while it is certainly employment-focused, it stresses substantive occupational training intended to place participants into jobs that earn self-sufficiency wages. Moreover, “service sequencing” does not accurately describe Utah’s client flow in WIA, given the post-reporting of core/intensive services pursuant to enrollment in training. However, Employment Centers have only given modest attention to training for high skilled jobs, particularly given the lack of higher education capacity in terms of community colleges and ATCs in the state.
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It is not clear what share of customers have recognized deficits in terms of education and training or whether they actually receive services to address them. There is simply no reliable way to measure this at this point in Utah.
Emergency assistance and supportive services appear to be available to clients who need them. Since TANF, Food Stamps, Medicaid, and child care can all be accessed (but not necessarily received) at Employment Centers, availability of these services (except for child care) appears quite good uniformly across the state. Child care capacity varies, and transportation services are constrained in many areas of the state, especially rural ones such as Moab. The economic slowdown has increased the demand for services at Utah Employment Centers, but the DWS service design at the centers appears to be flexible enough to respond if funding can be arranged to support expanded service delivery.
Section VII. Market Mechanisms: Their Use and Effects
A. Labor Market Information
Utah’s labor market information or workforce information system is well developed and relatively customer friendly. Thoughtful effort and resources have been devoted to it over a number of years. Despite this, as in most states, it is unclear whether the information system—and the tools and training required to make it truly effective for its customers—is used to its full potential. Utah’s workforce information system includes the usual information on wages and employment, cost of living, employment and unemployment, labor force characteristics, and career and industry trends. In addition to basic labor market information and numerous publications, the elements include:
• Utah’s state and regional economists program, in which DWS economists attend and make labor market information presentations to the state council and regional councils, as well as to Employment Centers, the Business Center, and other groups (e.g., chambers);
• The labor market information coordinator, a DWS staff person dedicated to communicating with the system’s customers in terms that are more readily understandable than those often used by economists. The coordinator ensures that the web-based information and other labor market information products are up to date and identifies key missing pieces;
• Training on labor market information and tools for accessing and using it; and
• America’s Labor Market Information System (ALMIS), developed by U.S. DOL and various consortia around the country. Utah was an early partner in ALMIS but has been admittedly slow to put it into use in the state.
186 Utah DWS has undertaken a number of initiatives to get labor market information out and used by its customers. Its regional economists travel around the state to get labor market information out to customers and the labor market information coordinator mediates the language and approaches used on the labor market information website and www.jobs.utah.gov so that the information is readily digestible by lay consumers. DWS also trains its customers on labor market information and tools. Job seekers and employers can access labor market information and related tools on the DWS website (www.jobs.utah.gov).
For job seekers, there is a mix of quick information and more elaborate publications to help guide them in understanding labor market conditions and trends. These include such quick information as: • Utah Occupations with Most New Job Openings; • Statewide Occupational Wage Table; • Largest Companies in Utah; and • Tips for Finding the Right Job.
It also disseminates more substantial publications, such as:
• Adult Career Guide (a revised version of which was released in early November 2002)—this guide features a Career Chart, organized by occupational title and description (not bureaucratic code) that presents the employment outlook, salary, training requirements, training sites (e.g., Salt Lake Community College, College of Eastern Utah), and other relevant information, such as whether the occupation is licensed or apprenticeable;
• Job Seeker’s Guide to Utah;
• Licensed Occupations in Utah, 2002;
• Utah Occupational Wages, 2002;
• Utah Job Outlook in Brief;
• Utah Labor Market Report; and
• Utah Job Outlook.
The DWS website also provides links to numerous U.S. DOL publications and other tools. In addition, enhanced information for job seekers also includes online access to the list of approved training providers and consumer report information described below. For employers, quick workforce information includes various tables by state, county, and locality, as well as industry fact sheets, the employment cost index, and
187 consumer price index. Labor market information publications geared to employers include: • Trendlines; • Utah Occupational Wages; • Labor Market Report; • North American Industrial Classification System Booklet; • Utah Equal Opportunity Information; • Key labor market information; • Utah Employers, Employment and Wages by Size of Firm; • Annual Report of labor market information; and • Utah Job Outlook, 2000—2005.
Employers also have online access to O*Net and numerous U.S. DOL and other publications and tools, most of which they will be able to connect to via UWORKS. Many of these same publications and sources are used daily by employment counselors working directly with job seekers at the local centers.
DWS staff see several labor market information challenges. First, as DWS increases emphasis on self-directed services in a more market-oriented system that relies increasingly on individual choice of careers, training providers, and jobs, job seekers must have ready access to accurate information about the labor market, training providers, and their effectiveness in terms they can understand. Second, employers and job seekers need tools and training on how to use them in order to access and use labor market information effectively. Third, moving to more self-directed labor exchange services presents challenges. Fourth, resources to support such investments are likely to be in short supply given the condition of federal and state budgets.
B. Individual Training Accounts and Provider Certification
Funding and capacity limitations—especially regarding community and technical colleges (e.g., the ATC system)—act as constraints on the provision of training. Utah established $5,000 per-participant cap on training costs, as well as a 24-month duration limitation if warranted by the individual’s needs and labor market demand. Eligible provider availability is a problem, especially in more rural areas of the state. Specific WIA-related training limitations include: • Limited and unpredictable funding flow for training under WIA; • WIA’s initial “work first” philosophy, though this is much less the case now than in 1999-2000; • WIA performance measures and expectations; and • Initial implementation of the eligible training provider provisions.
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Utah uses a guided-choice approach with its ITAs, within parameters established at the state and local level. For example, DWS will not fund cosmetology or tattoo artist training and has not for years: the jobs may be plentiful but the wages and benefits are too low to merit the expenditure of scarce training funds. The individual’s assets, needs, and desires are key. Individuals are encouraged to make their own choices based on labor market and career information, which they jointly develop and analyze with employment counselors. Note that "reverse referrals" are not unusual: community colleges or other providers bring or refer potential students to the Employment Center to pick up a referral, as well as financial and other support.
Utah has mainly relied on classroom training with ITAs rather than on-the-job training. DWS does not appear to have pursued customized training to any real extent. ITA policies do not seem to have been a big factor in the choice of training mode. DWS staff states that experience with ITAs has been limited to date, although expenditures on training statewide appear to be relatively high.
The use of ITAs represents a good fit with Utah’s market-oriented approach to workforce development, including emphasis on guided individual choice, as well as the shift to self-directed services. In this sense, ITAs have entered the workforce service landscape at just the point at which Utah launched into a market mode. Ironically, DWS staff are promoting market-based features, rather than private-for-profit or nonprofit contractors as in most states.
ITA challenges stem from Utah’s less developed postsecondary institutional capacity. There are few community colleges outside the larger population centers, and ATCs are only up and running in some regions, largely due to state funding limitations. Postsecondary education would appear to be the sector most affected by the shift to ITAs, but the effects are described as limited so far.
Utah’s provider certification procedures have evolved since they were first established in early 1999. For initial eligibility for WIA for July 1999, DWS sent applications to all approved JTPA training providers in the state. Those responding received an application for submission to the relevant regional councils, which used PY 1997 JTPA performance as the baseline for eligibility determination. Regional councils then forwarded approved applications to DWS for its approval.
For subsequent eligibility, DWS created a common application with the Office of Rehabilitation Services, which had similar requirements, expectations, and procedures. Approval for subsequent eligibility is necessary from DWS and the Office of Rehabilitation Services, as well as other agencies involved (e.g., Higher Education). The Utah State Council for Workforce Services makes the final determinations of provider eligibility and sends the list to DWS, which forwards it to regional councils and Employment Centers and puts it up on the DWS website. Ideally, UI wages would be used to document WIA and related performance, in conjunction with the Office of Education Applied Technology System and Higher Education (if details regarding data
189 sharing can be worked out). DWS has established procedures for removals and appeals as well.
The non-interactive eligible training provider list is available online in pdf form through a link with www.jobs.utah.gov. Schools that provide Pell Grants are automatically approved for Pell Grant-eligible programs only. Other information (completion rates, unsubsidized employment rates, costs, etc.) may be self-reported. Individuals can also request or review hard copies of the list in the Employment Centers. From the list, they can secure the following information, in an alphabetical listing by name of provider: • Provider name, address, and phone numbers; • Pell Grant approval status; • Number of years provider has been in business; • Training completion rates; • Percent of training graduates who worked in unsubsidized employment; • Wage rates (or annual or monthly salaries) for those working, by occupation, locality (though some of this information appears to be expected rather than actual); • Percent of graduates certified, and in some cases, types of certification (e.g., Microsoft Network Engineer, Sun Java Programming, teacher recertification); and • Program costs, including tuition and fees.
Consumer report system information has been combined into the DWS Approved Training Providers List in Utah, as indicated above, and can also be accessed online.
Use of the new provider certification process has allowed Utah to press even farther in the direction of informed, guided customer choice based on a market-based approach. However, challenges include negotiating data sharing with key partners, including public and higher education, as well as time lags and coverage for UI wage records. Note that, as a single-state WIA program, Utah has not encountered some of the problems reported elsewhere, e.g., providers recommended for certification in some WIB areas, but not others due to the application of different standards and performance expectations.
No substantial effects on the mix of providers or participation of key actors were reported in Utah from ITAs or the application of minimum provider standards, nor was there any sense that these procedures had constrained the employment and training options available for individual customers. The more important factors appeared to be provider capacity—especially postsecondary (e.g., ATCs)—and funding limitations.
Postsecondary institutions—including the Board of Regents and community colleges as well as the Office of Education’s ATC system—have not expressed
190 difficulties in responding to the new certification requirements, although they are not fully sharing data with DWS to support them.
C. Performance Standards and Incentives
State-level performance standards across WIA, adult education and literacy, and Perkins Act programs have not driven a sense of shared objectives. Despite receiving a PY 1999 performance bonus (approximately $860,000), DWS was largely unaware of any of its partners’ measures or outcomes and the policies or actions that fostered their attainment. The governor, in consultation with the three agency directors (i.e., DWS, Public, and Higher Education), decided how to allocate the bonus funding. DWS and the state council plan to solicit ideas for future uses of performance incentives, allowing regions to set priorities.
Delayed WIA registration and avoiding “soft exits” may be contributing to increased manipulation of reported performance in ways that were not allowable—or as easy—under JTPA. Center staff are aware of the need to “make their numbers” but, as state employees, are not under competitive pressures to win next year’s contract to serve as private or for-profit One-Stop Career Center operators. As a result, they may be able to concentrate more on the provision of quality services and less prone to hedge their outcomes. Other performance measurement issues include:
• UI wage record time lags weaken their use for performance management;
• The Church of Christ of Latter Day Saints employs large numbers of individuals across the state but is not UI-covered, adding to non-coverage issues and negatively biasing employment outcomes;
• Continuing data sharing issues involving workforce, education, and vocational rehabilitation impede the measurement of service participation and outcomes; and
• Weak definitions and inconsistent measurement of credentials are also problems.
Again, as a single-state WIB, there are no substate WIBS to negotiate with as such.
Regional planning councils and local Employment Centers seem to be very much aware of their expected performance against the standards. No local adjustments are made or contemplated for WIA performance standards in Utah. Utah’s single-state structure has been in place since 1998, and it has not had state-established standards at the local level since that time.
For performance measurement and management, DWS maintains an Intranet site supported by YODA (Your Online Data Access) software that accesses UWORKS data displaying unduplicated enrollments, training registrations and obligations, and outcomes for WIA and other workforce programs by region, Employment Center, funding stream, month, and year. These data are uploaded from the UWORKS system on a weekly basis. This site is accessible to all DWS staff statewide, as well as to state council members.
191
Utah DWS leaders and staff characterize the performance standards negotiation process as relatively one-sided: regional U.S. DOL/ETA provided a performance standard level for each measure and indicated that there was an unspecified range around it. Utah could then suggest alternative (mainly lower) standards. U.S. DOL/ETA would not share the range, according to DWS staff, but would say “no” if the alternative figure was not to their liking. Ultimately, Utah felt it had to acquiesce in standards that were very close to those initially put forth by U.S. DOL/ETA.15
The interplay of performance measurement and standards, loose data collection and reporting requirements, registering job seekers only when they appear to be succeeding, and back-registering core and intensive services confound the intent of the performance measurement process. It will be difficult to get valid cost-per figures in this environment, not to mention accurate attribution of results. Interstate comparisons will be even “noisier” than they were under JTPA, especially in states like Utah that utilize a multiple funding stream portfolio to support workforce development services. Utah has developed and implemented additional performance measures beyond those required by WIA, TANF, and other federal workforce funding streams. DWS developed these additional measures as part of a broader, business-oriented approach to performance management and they reflect Utah’s commitment to continuous improvement. DWS began by identifying key business processes associated with and supportive of program and service delivery and then identifying indicators that affect them. Measures were developed both for operational and key support processes. The additional performance measures for operational processes (the ones most relevant to this study) as of October 2002 are:
Employment Services—
• Rate of increased earnings of intensive service training customers, a pre- training versus 90-days post-training measure for customers completing training;
• Rate of increased earnings of all intensive service customers, a pre-/post- service measure for all customers completing intensive services;
• Rate of increased high school diploma or GED completion for intensive services customers;
• Staff-assisted entered employment rate, a measure of the effectiveness of job matching; and
• Participation rate, a measure of the total number of open FEP cases subject to work participation requirements and time limits.
Business Services—
192 • Employer market share rate, number of employers served compared to the number of employers known to DWS’s Workforce Information office, measured by state, region, county, and Employment Center, with benchmark information dating two years prior.
Self-Directed Services—
• Number of job openings listed via the web, measuring the total number of job orders and the total number of job orders listed via the Internet, by state, region, and Employment Center;
• Number of job seekers using the web, measuring the total number of job seekers and the total number of job seekers logging into self-directed services via the Internet, by state, region, and Employment Center; and
• Entered employment rate (not yet defined).
There are also several measures for eligibility services, but these relate to other funding streams, not workforce development.
The Governor and Lieutenant Governor are strong proponents of system performance measures. Utah is watching closely what other states like Texas and Washington are doing in terms of system measures. DWS staff are very concerned about the quality of return-on-investment (ROI) measurement in the workforce development system nationally and in a number of key states and want to proceed carefully. They have not yet begun to develop an ROI measure but are considering doing so.
Section VIII. Information Technologies in the One-Stop Career Centers
Utah was actively engaged with U.S. DOL in developing the initial One-Stop Operating System, or OSOS, but parted ways with them because they felt the design would not be sufficiently flexible to meet their needs in a highly integrated, seamless services environment. Utah subsequently developed UWORKS and has been through at least two generations of it to date. UWORKS serves as a data collection, case management, and reporting system across the various workforce, welfare, and related funding streams at the state and local level, which also supports program fiscal management.
UWORKS is highly integrated across programs and prior information systems (e.g., PACMIS). It provides eligibility workers at Employment Centers with a single system for determining eligibility that spans WIA, Employment Services, TANF, Food Stamps, child care, and other funding streams. Eventually, UWORKS will track individuals and employers using self-directed labor exchange by Social Security numbers for individual job seekers. Utah considered using "smart" and "swipe" cards to track activities but chose not to do so. There are no current plans to use them. DWS is satisfied with the support they are getting from their automated systems.
193 Distance/e-Learning and virtual universities do not play a big role in Utah’s workforce development and training strategies. Utah participates in the Western Governors University16 and has its own Utah Electronic Community College, advertised as the “gateway to distance learning opportunities from Utah’s public colleges.” The Utah Electronic Community College is a partnership of several Utah colleges—i.e., Snow College, Dixie State College, College of Eastern Utah, Utah Valley State College, and Salt Lake Community College—operating under the auspices of the Utah System of Higher Education.
DWS staff described Governor Leavitt as “a tech governor driving their workforce system,” who insisted that the Employment Services become “wired” and personally pushed for various information technology initiatives. Leavitt’s Smart Site Initiative is promoting the diffusion of advanced technology employment into rural areas. One project in development supports telecommuting. It involves developing medical records coding in rural areas in partnership with a Salt Lake City firm that offers these services. Residents trained at various ATC campuses around the state would code records online for large hospitals and clinics while working at home. This rural economic development effort is in collaboration with state and local economic development staff.
DWS provides both computer-assisted and online services as well as "soft- touch"—i.e., worker-assisted—services for job seekers, including customers who face special challenges. Those who are computer illiterate or simply less comfortable using technology to access services can turn to staff for help in the local Employment Centers. DWS also has "no-stops" — virtual one-stops — planned for implementation later this fall. Job seekers and employers will be further encouraged to secure services online without coming into a physical office at all.
Section IX. Summary Observations and Reauthorization Issues of Special Concern
Utah launched its systemic, integrated workforce reforms (i.e., House Bill 375) fully two years before WIA was passed and three years prior to WIA implementation. The impetus for these efforts appears to have come from: 1) its long-standing history of innovation in job training and workforce development generally, 2) an influential 1992 Legislative Auditor’s Report, 3) a committed governor and lieutenant governor, and 4) strong business leadership in the person of the first DWS director who also headed the lieutenant governor’s task force spearheading these reforms. WIA is largely consonant with Utah’s workforce reforms, although the act does not go nearly as far in terms of scope and is far more cumbersome in terms of regulatory and reporting requirements.
Utah is a leading state in integrating workforce and related services, having largely accomplished seamless service delivery for job seekers and employers. DWS has taken the provision of business services well beyond the rhetoric found in most states and localities. It has adopted a strong market-oriented approach within a state run, publicly managed workforce system. With the exception of Perkins, adult education/literacy, and vocational rehabilitation, almost all major funding streams are integrated into Utah’s
194 workforce system. WIA is viewed more as a hindrance than as a catalyst to change, due to its governance, reporting, and performance restrictions.
The cross-program performance provisions in WIA and Perkins have not had much effect on service delivery or state policy coordination. WIA performance standards, data collection, and reporting requirements may have led state and local DWS staff to manipulate their reported performance results in ways that may reduce their credibility.
Utah’s WIA program is not struggling to serve TANF and other low-skilled and low-income populations, nor is it encountering serious difficulties with employer engagement. TANF eligible and similar populations likely receive greater attention and better services under WIA than do higher educated and skilled populations.
Service delivery is largely geared to individual client needs. Salt Lake’s Downtown Employment Center prides itself on serving a very needy population of homeless and other clients in a very client-centered, holistic manner with extensive interagency partnerships. They have a full-time social worker on-site to assist with this approach. Their approach—here as well as in other offices—appears to be very much in the vocational rehabilitation tradition: caseworkers with considerable discretion, able to tap "vouchers" (ITAs) to get needy clients training and support services to foster employment and career advancement. The Moab office embodied many of the same features: client-centric, holistic, and ongoing partnerships with agencies ranging from economic development to education to mental health.
Utah’s experience also speaks to the value of strong, committed political leadership on the part of both the public and the private sector for workforce development. The Governor, Lieutenant Governor, and first DWS director were highly influential in shaping Utah’s successful workforce policies, implementing its workforce programs, and ensuring seamless delivery of workforce services to its job seekers and employers.
Vocational rehabilitation may be the partner with the least good fit for WIA, whether at One-Stop Career Centers or by referral, largely due to WIA’s expectations of full-time, permanent, unsubsidized employment. For many vocational rehabilitation clients with severe mental health/illnesses as well as physical disabilities such outcomes may be unrealistic and inappropriate. To engage vocational rehabilitation in the WIA process would take instituting varying performance expectations—possibly regression adjustments to performance standards—among other changes. It may also be that the best solution is simply enhanced funding and services for the vocational rehabilitation system.
The required structure and size of local workforce boards is not an issue in Utah, in that, as a single-state WIA program, only one is actually required, the State Council on Workforce Services. DWS staff clearly runs workforce and welfare services in Utah, at the state and local level, with input from the governor and lieutenant governor.
195
Problems with signing up eligible service providers in Utah do not appear to stem from issues related to WIA requirements for the eligible provider list or provider certification, but rather from lack of funding and insufficient postsecondary capacity, e.g., ATC development and few community college campuses around the state.
Utah’s business services approach and its stress on serious, point-of-service customer satisfaction and continuous improvement constitute substantive efforts to engage and empower the business sector. Utah would do well to pursue sectoral strategies as well.
Utah no longer needs “work-flex” authority for what it is doing under WIA according to regional U.S. DOL officials (see the waiver portion of www.doleta.org). Enhanced flex authority would be desirable in federal law (e.g., WIA, Perkins). Local elected officials, as noted, have become far less engaged in Utah workforce development than under JTPA, given the single-state DWS approach. This may become a problem over time if local elected officials are not so fully engaged.
Utah workforce leaders and staff cited a number of strengths and weaknesses related to WIA and related programs.17 WIA’s focus on job seekers and employers as customers rather than clients and on services rather than programs are primary strengths according to Utah informants. Informants also cited numerous weaknesses in WIA that were particularly problematic for Utah in light of its commitment to providing comprehensive, integrated services for its job seeker and employer customers. These must be viewed in this light. First, they pointed to inconsistent definitions among WIA and other programs (e.g., TANF, Perkins) that impeded the simplification of program operations. These definitional inconsistencies related to differing income standards, household composition, credentials, and administrative costs. Second, they cited various funding issues, including funding inadequacy, inconsistency of funding cycles among programs, and silo-based inflexibility. Funding overall to support services to universal customers and One-Stop Career Center operations is inadequate, as is funding for training. In addition, WIA forward-funds services from July to June while others current- fund from October through September. And, WIA is still too firmly imbedded in silos with too little flexibility. Third, they cited a number of problems with performance standards, including that they were too numerous and unworkable, that they were computed over varying time intervals and (due to some being based on UI wage records) lagged in time so as to be less useful for management purposes. In addition and “most important,” WIA standards cause frontline staff to “guess when to exit a registrant rather than concentrating on providing the best services to the registrant.” Fourth, Utah informants cited the eligible training provider requirements as being cumbersome and a disincentive to engaging education providers, given the small numbers being referred to training. They stated that WIA was an “inappropriate entity to ‘force’ consistent definitions and data collection from public and private training institutions.” Fifth, they cited the “fair share” funding concept for covering One-Stop Career Center costs. Many WIA partners simply do not have the funding to provide their fair share. Sixth, they cited WIA’s inflexibility relative to TANF and other funding streams. Finally, service
196 procurement requirements as they relate to youth were cited: competitive bids are a costly approach where capacity is limited.
To address these weaknesses in WIA and its relationships to other key workforce and related program funding streams, Utah leaders and staff offered numerous recommendations. First, WIA should allow states greater flexibility in a number of areas, including program design and service delivery, the establishment of performance measures and standards, and other aspects. In this regard, they point to the fact that TANF programs have allowed states far greater flexibility in these areas than WIA. They feel that WIA would be more successful if it enjoyed the same degree of flexibility as TANF. Second, they recommended enhanced funding and funding flexibility for WIA in order to support One-Stop Career Center operations and serve the universal customer. Third, Utah recommended eliminating the “fair-share” funding concept altogether until U.S. DOL “requires all of the mandatory partners to pay their ‘fair share’.” Fourth, they recommended allowing “states to merge services by waiving regulation or, ideally, actually having the authority to develop the systems within the state like TANF.” Utah recommends a systemic rather than a regulation-by-regulation waiver process as being far more productive. Finally, Utah recommends allowing greater procurement discretion for youth (and other services), in particular the flexibility to do noncompetitive procurement in areas with limited provider capacity.
197 Acronyms (all refer to Utah state or local entities, unless otherwise indicated)
ATC Applied Technology Center
DWS Department of Workforce Services
FEP Family Employment Program
UCAT Utah College of Applied Technology
198 APPENDIX A
Figure 1: Utah DWS Organization Chart
Executive Director's Office State Workforce Policy Analyst/Legislative Liaison Executive Director Investment Board Communications/Customer Relations (SWIB)
Deputy Director Human Resources Deputy Director
Adjudication Finance Service Delivery Support
Facilities Audit Central Regional Central Region Council
Une mployme nt Office of Child Uintah Basin & Insurance Care Eas te rn Re gion Southeast Regional Councils
Labor Market Information/ Mountainland MIS Mountainland Region Regional Council
Workforce Information Bear River & Technology North Region Wasatch North Regional Councils
Western Western Region Regional Council
199 APPENDIX A
Figure 2: Location of Employment Centers
200 APPENDIX A
Figure 3: Service Delivery Flow Chart
Customer Enters Employment Center Self Directed Services
Information Specialist Food Stamps Only
Skills Review Employment Supported Child Care
Employment Exchange Activities
Sufficient Yes Employment Employment? E C B O L U Job Connection Career LMI Workshops Skills Testing Referrals I R Area Counseling S No E G I Sufficient Yes Employment I Employment? N B E I S Initial Assessment L S Paperwork is given to an I Eligibility Specialist for Intensive Services Completion T Funding Determination I And/Or customer is Y S referred to RIC Center N Yes E T Formal Assessment Contracted Vocational / R (Includes Social Comprehensive Assessments E Worker Assessment Assessment Mental Health N V In-House) Evaluations U S I I I C Employment Plan V E S E Mentoring / Intervention /
Sufficient Yes Employment T Employment? R No A Training I Services? N Classroom Work Site I Training Yes Learning N Employment G Service Closure (As Needed)
201 APPENDIX B
Table 1: Utah Workforce Development Program Matrix & Linkages (PY 2001)
One-Stop Funding Lead State Local State Local Program/Funding Stream Presence Source Agency Administrative Agreement Agreement Entity Mechanism Mechanism
WIA Title I Adults 1 Fed DWS DWS USP LOP WIA Title I Dislocated 1 Fed DWS DWS USP LOP Workers WIA Title I Youth (19- 1 Fed DWS DWS USP LOP 21) WIA Title I Youth (14- 1 Fed DWS DWS LOP 18) USP Wagner-Peyser ES 1 Fed DWS DWS USP LOP Job Corps 2 Fed USDOL Contractors N/A N/A TANF Work Program 1 Fed/State DWS DWS N/A LOP TAA/NAFTA TAA 1 Fed DWS DWS N/A LOP Veterans E&T 1 Fed DWS DWS N/A LOP Food Stamp E&T 1 Fed DWS DWS N/A LOP WtW Formula N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A WIA Title II Adult 2 Fed/State Public Ed. ISDs MOU MOU Education Perkins Vocational 2 Fed/State Higher Ed ISDs, CCs, MOU MOU Education ATCs WIA Title IV Vocational 2 Fed/State Office of Office of MOU MOU Rehabilitation Rehab. Rehab. Youth Opportunity Grants N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A Displaced Workers 1 State DWS DWS DWS LOP
Child Care 1 Fed/State DWS DWS DWS LOP Definitions/Coding: One-Stop presence: 1- Co-located at the One-Stop Career Center; 2- Accessed through One-Stop Career Center referral; 3- Information only provided; 4- Completely disconnected.
Administrative entity: DWS- Utah Department of Workforce Services; ISD- Independent School District; CC- Community College; and ATC- Applied Technology Center.
State agreement mechanism: Define USP- Unified State Plan; MOU- Memorandum of Understanding; DWS- Utah Department of Workforce Services.
Local agreement mechanism: LOP- Local Operating Plan; MOU – Memorandum of Understanding
202 APPENDIX B
Table 2: Utah Workforce Development Participation Patterns (PY 2001)
FUNDING STREAM Total Core Intensive Training
WORKFORCE TOTAL WIA Title I Adults 2,011 2,011 1,852 WIA Title I Dislocated Workers & Rapid 2,216 2,216 1,868 Response Add’l Assistance WIA Title I Youth (14-18) 1,014 1,014 942 WIA Title I Youth (19-21) 208 208 183
WIA Title I Subtotal 5,449 5,449 4,845 WIA Title II Adult Education*** 80 80 60 WIA Title IV Vocational Rehab*** 370 370 196 Wagner-Peyser Employment Service 254,981 254,981 TANF Work Program (FEP) 14,555 14,555 6,315 TAA/NAFTA TAA 1,008 1,008 888 Veterans E&T 49 49 23 Food Stamp E&T 7,766 7,766 1,521 WtW Formula Grants N/A N/A N/A Corrections N/A N/A N/A Perkins Vocational Education*** 15 15 1 Older Americans Title V*** 1 1 0 Youth Opportunity Grants N/A N/A N/A Tech Prep N/A N/A N/A State Training Fund N/A N/A N/A Explanatory Notes: * PY 2001 (July 2001 – June 2002). **157,680 were new applicants in PY 2001. ***Figures in italics indicate WIA Partner Programs not administered by DWS but tracked in DWS case management system as co-enrollments with a DWS-administered program.
203 Notes
1 Only a handful of states (e.g., Vermont) are operating WIA as single-state entities.
2 See Office of the Utah Legislative Auditor General, A Review of the Coordination of Utah’s Employment and Training Programs, Salt Lake City: ULAG, Report #92-10, 1992. The follow-up report by the Legislative Auditor General describes the events leading up to the passage of Utah’s workforce development legislation and subsequent events; see A Follow-up Review of Utah’s Employment and Training Programs, Salt Lake City: ULAG, Report No. 2000-03, August 2000.
3 The August 2000 Utah Legislative Auditor General’s Follow-up Report recommended consolidating the Office of Rehabilitation Services into the Utah Department of Workforce Services.
4 The strong business orientation of Utah’s workforce programs has been a consistent theme for many years. The Utah Employment Service was employer-dominated since it was first established in the 1930s.
5 Public education is very much a locally controlled system in Utah with some 35 independent school districts (ISDs) operating in Utah’s 29 counties, many of which span enormous geographic areas (some larger than Rhode Island). State public education officials offer verbal support but ultimately cannot control the actions of the local ISDs that are critical to workforce development.
6 Utah’s conservative legislature has balked at providing adequate state matching funds for child care services, largely out of a sense that a woman’s place is in the home, not in the workplace. Ironically, as several observers pointed out, Utah has among the highest labor force participation rates in the nation (with rates in the mid-70s), for men as well as for women. Larger than average family sizes mean intense pressures to work for most family members. Median household earnings for Utahans are well below the national average, but so are their household poverty rates, the net result of having more household members in the workforce.
7 Researchers at the University of Utah have written numerous reports on Utah workforce and welfare policy that workforce development leaders and staff were familiar with. For example, see Andrea Coon, Mcleans Geo-Jaja, and Garth Mangum, From Welfare Poor to Working Poor: Post AFDC/TANF Income in the State of Utah, Salt Lake City: University of Utah, November 2000; Garth Mangum and Richard Maxfield, Career Preparation Prospects and Challenges of the New Utah College o Applied Technology (UTCAT), Salt Lake City: University of Utah, August 2001; and Richard Maxfield and Garth Mangum, Career Preparation for Economic Development: Solving a Growing Utah Crisis, Salt Lake City: University of Utah, June 2002.
8 Two of the five councils have two subregions that are also represented.
9 For additional detail about Utah’s workforce programs under WIA for the period July 2001 through June 2002, the third year of WIA in the state, see: State of Utah Department of Workforce Services, Workforce Investment Act Title I-B Report, Program Year 2001, Salt Lake City: Utah DWS, 2002.
10 The other is Ohio. Both states were concerned about the state matching fund, and the overly restrictive eligibility and targeting requirements, contained in the Welfare-to-Work program. Utah DWS staff remain convinced they made the right decision.
11 An interesting effect of serving as world headquarters to the Church of Christ of the Latter Day Saints, with its far-ranging missionary work, is that Salt Lake has emerged as a very international city and has even become one of the relocation sites for the Lost Boys of the Sudan. It has also given rise to a number of international business centers.
12 Individual Training Accounts (ITAs) appear to have had little effect on the role of community colleges and ATCs as yet.
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13 For example, see Garth Mangum and John Salevurkis, The Impact of Welfare Reform on the Charitable Efforts of the Salt Lake Valley Faith Community, Salt Lake City: Center for Public Policy and Administration, University of Utah, Welfare Reform Initiative, October 2000. The Latter Day Saints Church, which is the religious affiliation of about 70 percent of Utahans, has a highly developed social services organization that has evolved since the Great Depression in the 1930s.
14 Note that Utah’s caseload is small (fewer than 9,000 cases statewide) and that the Church of Christ of Latter Day Saints, the largest religion in the state, has its own parallel welfare and employment system.
15 This process is reminiscent of Boulwarism, a “bargaining” process named after General Electric’s Vice President Lemuel Boulware who engaged in “take-it-or-leave-it” negotiating with the electrical unions. Boulwarism was deemed illegal under the nation’s collective bargaining laws in a 1961 U.S. Supreme Court case.
16 The Western Governors University had much lower enrollment and graduation numbers than was generally thought to be the case according to Robert W. Glover, Christopher T. King, Francis Dummer Fisher and Lodis Rhodes, Technology-based Solutions to Workforce Service Delivery, Austin, TX: Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, Policy Research Project Report Number 142, 2002.
17 These comments are derived from our interviews with state and local administrators and staff, as well as from their comments to U.S. DOL/ETA in late June 2002 as part of the WIA reauthorization process.
205